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Sabersphere 1/21: RIP Earl Weaver and Stan Musial

Today's Sabersphere is dedicated to the lives of Earl Weaver and Stan Musial.

Dilip Vishwanat

Jesse Wolfersberger of Fangraphs talks about Stan Musial: Stan Musial: 1920-2013

On Saturday night, baseball lost one of its all-time greats. Stan "The Man" Musial, a Hall-of-Fame inductee who played 22 seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals, passed away at the age of 92.

Greg Simons of The Hardball Times looks at Musial: The greatest Cardinal is gone

For Cardinals fans of the past 15 years, the greatest player they've ever witnessed wearing the birds-on-a-bat jersey obviously is Albert Pujols. For fans such as me who grew up watching Whitey Herzog's runnin' Redbirds, it was Ozzie Smith. A generation before that, it was Bob Gibson or Lou Brock.

Every St. Louis Cardinals fan under the age of 47 has never been inside the stadium where Stan Musial played baseball. The first time I saw him he was a giant, slightly ridiculous Soviet-realist statue at the front of Busch Stadium with weirdly broad shoulders.

Larry Granillo writes about both: Earl Weaver & Stan Musial, together
March 8, 1952, in St. Petersburg, Florida. Spring training. The defending World Champion New York Yankees are facing 1951's third place St. Louis Cardinals in the first test of new player-manager Eddie Stanky. Stanky's main goal is to try and get a good feeling for his new squad—especially the young kids who have been toiling away in Omaha and the rest of the minor league system—but there's little doubt that he wants to make a respectable showing in his new role.
Bruce Markusen of That Hardball Times looks at Earl Weaver: A tribute to Earl Weaver
One could make an argument for Tommy Lasorda, Dick Williams, Bobby Cox, or Joe Torre, among others. But I suspect that a number of observers within the baseball community would nominate Earl Weaver, who died on Saturday at age 82, as the finest manager of the expansion era.